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I made wine in an Instant Pot ... and a master sommelier didn't hate it

I made wine in an Instant Pot.

I made wine in an Instant Pot using Welch's grape juice.

I made wine in an Instant Pot using Welch's grape juice, then had the gall to ask one of Texas' most knowledgeable wine tasters, master sommelier James Tidwell, to drink it.

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And you're not going to believe what happened next: He did not hate it. He didn't spit it out, or grimace, or tell me my millennial version of prison wine (minus the toilets and ex-cons) was awful. He said "good job."

It isn't glamorous: Once the wine has cooked for 48 hours in an Instant Pot, the recipe...
It isn't glamorous: Once the wine has cooked for 48 hours in an Instant Pot, the recipe recommends pouring it back into its original Welch's grape juice plastic bottle and placing it in a cool, dark place for at least eight days.(Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Wait, what?

As it turns out, blogger David Murphy's viral recipe for Instant Pot Wine uses some pretty smart science, offering the opportunity for nearly anyone who can follow a few steps to make not-terrible wine.

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What's more, the recipe — which makes use of not only cheap grape juice but also the plastic jug it comes in — did not yield overly sweet wine, despite the fact that it was made from Concord grape juice, which isn't exactly the most popular grape for winemaking.

"It's drier than I thought it would be," Tidwell said of what we will hereafter call my Non-vintage American Concord Wine, brewed lovingly in The Dallas Morning News' basement kitchen. "It's surprising how dry it is."

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I beamed, as if he'd told me my kid was cute.

To be fair, Tidwell could likely name thousands of wines that taste better than my Non-Vintage American Concord Wine. But he could probably name some that taste worse, and those were made by actual professionals.

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So you want to try this at home?

The key to Murphy's Instant Pot Wine recipe is that it requires the winemaker to "cook" the liquid on the yogurt setting, which keeps the temp at about 80 degrees, a sweet spot for fermenting red wine, Tidwell notes. For the 48 hours it steeps in the Instant Pot, the recipe calls for toggling the valve on the lid, from open to close, every six to eight hours. That allows the carbon dioxide to escape intermittently.

Because the valve needs to be toggled every six to eight hours, over a period of 48 hours,...
Because the valve needs to be toggled every six to eight hours, over a period of 48 hours, to make Instant Pot wine, a small team of journalists working the late-night and early-morning shifts made notes to show when they aerated the wine.(Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

Isn't there a small part of you that wants to try it? Best case, you spend $5 on the ingredients and end up with your very own House Red. Worst case, you realize you're more of a $8-a-bottle person and toss it.

(And if you're an $80-a-bottle person, well, you probably haven't read this far anyhow.)

Surf over to Murphy's recipe on today.com to see the full recipe. Here's the overview: Remove 1 cup of juice from a plastic, 64-ounce jug of Welch's grape juice. Pour 1 cup of sugar into the remaining juice in the jug and give it a serious shake. Add 5 grams of red wine yeast and shake gently. Then pour the whole jug into the Instant Pot, top it off with the remaining 1 cup of grape juice, and close the lid for 48 hours, cooking it on the yogurt setting and togging the valve. When it's done, pour all the liquid back into the original plastic jug, put the lid on halfway (to allow some of the CO2 to escape) and put it in a cool, dark place, like a kitchen cabinet.

Call your Instant Pot wine whatever you like. Master Sommelier James Tidwell helped us name...
Call your Instant Pot wine whatever you like. Master Sommelier James Tidwell helped us name ours properly: Non-vintage American Concord Wine.(Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer)

Murphy says his wine was "more than drinkable" after sitting for eight days. For good measure, my Non-vintage American Concord Wine sat coolly, developing character, for 19 days.

Tidwell smelled and tasted the wine just as he might have a $700 bottle. Mine developed "foxy" notes, a wine taster's term for "a sort of wild, musky, animal smell" sometimes found in American grape varieties, notes WineSpectator.com. Tidwell detected cherry and berry on the nose, too.

And he complimented the wine for not carrying a "wet horse blanket" aroma. That's no joke: Wine can take on a barnyard smell, especially if something went awry in the fermenting process. How to avoid wet horse blanket on the nose? Carefully sterilize the Instant Pot first.

Look, there's a reason the Instant Pot is the must-have kitchen gadget right now — and it isn't wine. But if your pressure cooker would've sat up on the top shelf, unused, for two days anyhow, mix up some sugary, lukewarm juice and see if you can make some magic.

"He likes it!" Well ... maybe "He doesn't hate it" is more accurate. Sarah Blaskovich talks...
"He likes it!" Well ... maybe "He doesn't hate it" is more accurate. Sarah Blaskovich talks tasting notes with master sommelier James Tidwell as he samples her wine, made in an Instant Pot.(Ron Baselice / Staff Photographer)

If you love wine and/or your Instant Pot, check these out: